Yoonseo Zoh


I’m a PhD student in Psychology / Stats & ML at Princeton.
🧠 🤖 💡 ❤️
My research explores how people make decisions regarding issues of justice and morality, the cultural evolution of these processes,
and the impact of technology in this evolving landscape

How to pronounce my name

Publications

What are the consequences of holding different intuitive moral theories? Do distinct moral theories shape how people represent and …
PDF DOI Link

A transformative experience is epistemically revelatory and life-changing. When faced with transformative decisions, the lack of …
PDF DOI PsyArXiv

Humans have an exceptional ability to cooperate relative to many other species. We review the neural mechanisms supporting human …
PDF DOI Link

Trust in leaders is central to citizen compliance with public policies. One potential determinant of trust is how leaders resolve …
PDF DOI Link

Decomposing the neurocomputational mechanisms of deontological moral preferences (submitted)
Research on the neurocomputational mechanisms of moral judgment has typically focused on contrasting utilitarian preferences to …

Historical principles in distributive decision-making are common, politically variable and malleable (submitted)
Theories of distributive justice highlight different approaches for how people ought to allocate scarce resources. End-result …

Selected Publications

What are the consequences of holding different intuitive moral theories? Do distinct moral theories shape how people represent and reason about moral problems—and do these effects extend beyond contexts directly tied to a theory’s content? Recent research suggests that individual differences in utilitarian tendencies fall along two dimensions: a permissive attitude toward harming others for greater good (instrumental harm) and an impartial concern for others’ welfare (impartial beneficence). We conceptualized these dimensions as distinct intuitive moral theories that frame different patterns of moral judgment and behavior.
In JEP:General., 2025
PDF DOI Link

A transformative experience is epistemically revelatory and life-changing. When faced with transformative decisions, the lack of relevant life experience means people cannot predict their future subjective values (‘what it will be like’), making it impossible to make rational decisions. Here, we provide empirical support for this decision-theoretic bind by showing that evaluability bias manifests in transformative decisions: even if individuals value information about subjective value, they may assign low importance to subjective value due to its inherent difficulty in evaluation.
In press, 2024
PDF DOI PsyArXiv

Humans have an exceptional ability to cooperate relative to many other species. We review the neural mechanisms supporting human cooperation, focusing on the prefrontal cortex. Taking a comparative approach, we consider shared and unique aspects of cooperative behaviors in humans relative to nonhuman primates, as well as divergences in brain structure that might support uniquely human aspects of cooperation.
In Neuropsychopharmacology, 2021
PDF DOI Link

Projects

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All Moral Norm & Ethics Epistemic Humility Decision-making

Decision-making


How do we make decisions regarding transformative experiences, given that these very experiences could potentially change our preferences?

How does our cognitive representation of the experiences of others, which are outside our own lived experiences, shape the social decisions we make?

Epistemic Humility


What cognitive mechanisms underlie our (in)ability to acknowledge the limits of comprehending others’ lived experiences?

What are the interventions that can foster epistemic humility, and which cognitive processes could be targeted?

Moral Norm & Ethics


Whether and how do moral norms culturally evolve?

How do we adjudicate between different moral principles when they conflict?

What are cognitive subcomponents of utilitarianism and deontology?

Accomplish­ments

Graduate Research Support

Program in Cognitive Science, Princeton University Aug 2024
This funding supports graduate research at Princeton in cognitive science, specifically to initiate new lines of interdisciplinary research in the field.

The G. Mason Morfit ’97 Fellowship

Kahneman-Treisman Center for Behavioral Science & Public Policy Sep 2023 – Jun 2024
The program offers financial support to graduate students from Princeton University, who are engaged in studies in the domain of behavioral science and public policy. Selection of the recipients is based on the outstanding academic progress and the projected path of future research

Overseas PhD Scholarship

Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies Sep 2019 – Sep 2025
The program selects outstanding students in the fields of social sciences, natural sciences, and Computer science, and Electrical Engineering, providing financial and moral support and encouraging these students to become world class scholars who will open dialogues with the international academic community and who will serve as an engine for national development.

Skills

Python

Nipype, Nilearn, Pandas, Numpy, Matplotlib, Scikit-learn, Psychopy

R

ggplot2, rstan, glmer, dplyr, R Markdown

MATLAB

SPM12, glmnet

html

jspsych, online behavior experiment

Adobe

Photoshop, Premiere pro

git

git, github

Tags

Contact

  • Peretsman Scully Hall 330